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PPC Advertising Suffers Global Decline

Global Marketing News – 5th February 2016

PPC advertising suffers global decline

Research by Adobe has revealed that the global online advertising landscape is undergoing some dramatic changes.

Paid search advertising growth is on the decline as advertisers flock to using programmatic display adverts instead, due to the latter’s superior personalisation capabilities.

Global paid search growth decreased by 75% last year, with the biggest drop being in Europe.

Those advertisers who are using paid search are increasing the amount of money they’re spending on mobile ads, with 38% of search ad spend going on mobile, reflecting the fact that 41% of internet users globally are accessing the web via their mobile phones.

Attitudes towards Google paid search advertising are also changing. Whilst the amount advertisers spent on Google search ads increased by 4% in North America, it actually fell by a third in Europe compared to the previous year. This may be due to the ongoing EU investigation into Google for alleged anti-competitive practices.

Focusing on the rise of display advertising, the study also looked at the Google Display Network and Facebook News Feed. Both display networks saw increases in their click-through-rates year-on-year, with Google seeing growth of 27% and Facebook seeing growth of 36%. The rise has been attributed to improvements in audience-targeting technologies.

Russian internet population grows by 4 million

The Russian internet population grew by 4 million people in 2015, according to research by GfK.

There is now an estimated 84 million Russians using the internet, equivalent to around 60% of the population.

The growth was driven primarily by increased smartphone ownership and an increase in the number of older people coming online. The vast majority of young Russians are already online.

The news comes as the Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the Russian government to force foreign internet companies to pay a tax in order to operate in the country.

The proposed so-called “Google tax” is meant to encourage “more equal working conditions” and stimulate the growth of Russian internet companies.

39% of Brazilians use geolocation mobile services

A study by F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi and Datafolha Instituto de Pesquisas has found that 39% of Brazilians use geolocation services on their mobile phones.

Geolocation services are those that use the physical location of the mobile phone, as defined by the phone’s GPS.

The most common geolocation activity was to use an online maps service to plan a route or avoid traffic, with 23% of respondents saying they did this.

Contacting taxis and letting friends know their location were also popular reasons, reported by 10% of respondents.

A separate study by Symantec revealed the key reason stopping some Brazilians using geolocation services was a reluctance to share such personal data with companies.

Brazil has an internet population of 108 million people, equivalent to 53% of the population, with the vast majority of these people (47%) using their mobile phones to access the web.

Global Marketing Index (GMI) shows dip in marketing activity

The World Economics Global Marketing Index (GMI) measured a dip in international marketing activity in January compared to the previous month.

The decline is just a small dip, with international marketing activity showing growth overall.

Europe had the highest marketing budget, compared to the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas.

Europe also came top for recruiting the most new marketing staff.

When looking specifically at different marketing mediums, global marketing budgets fell for TV, radio and press.

Shield 5 series launches on Instagram

And finally, the first ever video series has launched on Instagram.

The series, called Shield 5, is about a security guard who is framed for taking part in a diamond heist and forced to go on the run.

Each instalment is just 15 seconds long and one new episode is being published at 5pm GMT on Instagram every day this month.

It is the first example of so-called “social cinema” to take place on Instagram.

Instagram is a popular image-based social network, with approximately 400 million monthly active users.

Gemma Houghton

Gemma has been working in international search for 10 years and leads Webcertain's marketing team. As well as managing Webcertain’s global online and offline marketing activities, she also organises and programs Webcertain's International Search Summit, a search marketing conference focusing on international and multilingual online marketing and contributes regularly to the Webcertain blog. She has also spoken at conferences such as SES and SasCon and writes regularly for State of Digital. Gemma holds a Professional Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a BA Joint Honors Degree in French and German.

What we see in Germany and Austria is that competition for keywords has increased. This, in turn, has led to lower margins for advertisers with their campaigns. These companies are now reluctant spend more on PPC campaigns.